


Into the Night

by jjisungix



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gangsters, Angst, Blood, Character Death, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Manipulation, Plot Twists, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-05
Updated: 2020-09-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:06:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26293861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jjisungix/pseuds/jjisungix
Summary: Maybe it was better to be ignorant, to forget. It would hurt less than this.
Relationships: Lee Jeno/Na Jaemin
Kudos: 4





	Into the Night

**Author's Note:**

> hehehe another fic!!! I wrote this bc I got bored  
> pov switching hehe every "<>" switches from jm to jn or vice versa  
> also I haven't touched my nomin royalty fic in ages and don't plan to bc I have NO IDEAS for that help  
> PLEASE READ THE TAGS AND TAKE THEM SERIOUSLY  
> a lot of symbolism/description and not much dialogue (at least so far)  
> gets REALLY dark later on (at least I think hhh)  
> happy reading!

The formally dressed man stood in the small room, alone. Everything was silent.

_click._

He opened the small drawer, pulling out an even smaller wooden box, then opening it, fingering the edge of the wing of the creature inside. 

There was a difference between a dragonfly and a butterfly. It was an utter, utter shame people these days confused them. The dragonfly was swifter, more ambitious. The butterfly flitted around, looking pretty. A normal person could even tell this difference, from merely observing the way they flied around the same garden.

Hell, even what they ate could determine their.......standing. 

Butterflies ate the sweet nectar from the flowers in the garden, food already make and given for them.

But the dragonflies, they ate the other bugs in the garden. One swirl of its iridescent wings circling lazily, but intently, would scare the living shit out of all the living things in the garden.

Both were alive, but only one who knew how to live was the dragonfly.

Jeno touched the delicate wing of the dragonfly, then rested the sheet covering back on the box. 

Be a dragonfly. His father had always told him. Always know what you want. Don't be like the butterflies and the bees. They were always sorted together, because they just didn't have the ability to stand out.

_"For a little longer, be a butterfly, even a bee. You'll be free in no time."_

He closed the drawer with a quiet snick, straightened his suit and walked out.

<>

"There's a hair on your dress shirt." Was all what he deemed appropriate to say when his lieutenant walked into the room, handsomeness boosted at the max. Gosh, Jaemin was utterly whipped.

Said lieutenant looked a bit bashful, lowering his head as he picked off a red hair from the space he had mentioned, casting it aside. 

"Apologies. Are you ready for the ball tonight?"

He almost forgot to answer, drowning in the other's face until that changed into a slight frown and he cocked his head.

"Boss, you good? You look a bit dazed, i'm sure you're extremely tired from the--"

Jaemin waved a hand at him, well, more to himself to clear his thoughts. "Yes, I'm fine. Let's go, shall we?" A smile.

Jeno smiled back, his eyes curving into crescents. Charming. "Okay. Let's kick some ass."

Jaemin would always remember everything. Feelings, he could control, this was the least he could do.

<>

They arrived at the ball, fashionably late because this crew, this organization apparently liked doing that. 

Even though it guaranteed a flashy entrance, which was arguably a rather good tactic, they had almost gotten their asses beaten and handed if it weren't for Jeno's last minute fail safes he had implemented. Many times.

They weren't there to kill anyone today, just to negotiate. Negotiating was a horribly nice word to describe the situation. Men and women, dressed in full black attire, lounging on couches, guns at the ready. Barely veiled threats hidden under sharp cheshire cat smiles. 

If there was something Jaemin was good at from the past three months Jeno had been his right hand, it was talking. But butterflies did the talking, of course. Dragonflies killed.

And that was what he was for, the role he had to play. Three months already. It was always three, these things. The countdown for his simulation practices ran for three seconds. Three symbolized the past, the present, the future. Three months worth of time to bring down an entire crime empire.

So he lazed around, giving threatening yet sweet smiles to the people Jaemin talked to. Finally, they were reaching the person they had came here for. It was time.

Jeno caught the eye of Donghyuck, who was also strategically at the table the man sat at. As they whisked past them, their hands brushed.

Two hard drives fell into each other's hands. He stuffed his in his pocket with the guise of fixing his suit. He couldn't help notice the dark circles around his eyes and mentally thanked himself for plugging extra money into the payment. 

_Padded slippers, fluorescent white lights turned to the max, the quietness of_

A jab on his shoulder got him out of that flashback(?!) and he turned to Jaemin. Donghyuck had been the one to elbow him, as they were now standing side to side. His eyes had looked concerned as his light gaze raked over him and back to the light-haired male still conversing with the beefy man.

He watched as Jaemin smiled his version of the cheshire cat smile, all teeth showing, and downed his flute of champagne. Was that his first? Second? Gosh, he didn't know what they had been talking about. 

What was that memory about, anyways??

He saw him down his third flute, and everything exploded.

<>

Jaemin was rather bad at observations, because his attention span was short to begin with, but he noticed that his lieutenant had been in a daze almost the entire time they were there. 

Even when they made it out of the hall, he wasn't talking. He was deep in thought face, he's thinking, he realized.

At the deepest recesses of his mind, he was worried, well, he had always been. Would he remember? For all his life, he had known he was a bad actor, so he couldn't have possibly been acting. Hell, they had almost fucked up a mission because of his shit acting skills.

But this Jeno was different.

Jaemin brushed the thoughts away, banishing them down to that endless pit of pity, and smiled at the red haired male striding beside him.

Late at night, long after Jeno had fallen asleep, he rose, and went to the bathroom, turning on the lights. Fluorescent white ones. Just like the facility.

He stared at himself in the mirror, placing his dry hands on his cheeks which were rather sunken, he noticed. The organization had been through a low point, and he was sure they would work it out soon, one more murder. One more life for the sufficiency of thousands that deserved it.

He took out his phone, a sleek object, and dialed a number.

"Hello, Mark? Any updates on the account?"

<>

If Jeno was a dragonfly, and Jaemin was a butterfly, then Renjun was a bee, a hornet or a wasp at most. He was naturally slightly barbed, but the real prick would cost his life, as he was trapped. Trapped under his father's strict regime.

Jeno hadn't directly talked to his father in five months, after he had gotten the mission requirements and started his preparations. 

If he saw that face, heard the voice, it gave him flashbacks to a cloudy, murky past. The way he emailed, facts with that little warning at the end like a barbed tail of a serpent. The type of reptile that swallowed dragonflies whole. 

It was all like him. Jeno chose not to constantly remember the sole reason why he was here. A life for a life, an empire for an empire. 

Hammurabi's code. Equality yet without equality. Why should someone else pay for a stranger's mistakes? 

He had learned to brush these kinds of thoughts off as fending for oneself, being morally grey. Get what you want. 

If these mindsets were fixed, could they be changed? Or was it just the animalistic instinct of humans to act like gutter rats? 

After he had heard Jaemin finish his phone call and climb back into bed, snoring, he slipped out his laptop.

Another flaw of his boss. He was unnecessarily loud. 

"Be loud when you need to, but fitting in and staying quiet is how empires are toppled and lives are taken."

Unfortunately, night was the only time when he could discover what was going on, and also the only time thoughts ran rogue in his sleep deprived brain.

He plugged the first drive in. All in Renjun's style of typing again. Diverted weapons sales, the money he had smuggled out of Jaemin's accounts, were all safely in his father's possession. An off-seas bank account of course, so they wouldn't notice any substantial gains out of nowhere. The Lee empire had been quiet, ever since Mark. It was understandable, also an underlying excuse to get Jeno here.

He took the first one out with a soft snick that could've been mistaken as a roll over in the bed, incase the man in the next room was awake. The second one slid in silently.

It was different style of writing this time, he noticed. He almost didn't recognize it at first, but his mouth fell open, slack-jawed, as he realized. His father's style.

_Jeno,_

_I know this comes off as rather unexpected, so count this as a mini check in, and an information bank only you and I share._

_Has your childhood always felt far off? I'm sure your first three or so years, with your late mother are nothing but figments of dust now, but what about your tweens? Late teenage years? I have uncovered and decided to share the truth, the deeper reason to why you are now._

_I'm sure you studied various mental disorders with Ms. Kim in your training for this particular mission. Did you find it odd? Of course you shouldn't have, we never know what comes in missions, especially this type. I'm sure you know you missed your last two years of high school. But time is money, and we never let it pass, like the running water of a river. Shut this laptop and think, my son._

_What did you do? When you have a good idea, read the rest._

Jeno did as he told, shutting the laptop shut. Mental disorders? High school? Normally, one wouldn't focus on their high school experience, only having it being an underlying topic. Now that he really really focused on that topic alone, he realized there was a huge gap. 

Now the second piece. Mental disorders. He was deemed entirely healthy when he had received his evaluation for clearance procedures all the way back when he was 14? 15? , so he couldn't have been born with it.

Schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, no no no. Those didn't fix the context. It had to be something that dealt directly with his memory. Alzheimers? PTSD? He quickly ruled the first one out.

There wasn't any traumatic events he had gone through, though. He remembered his first kill, first mission, first explosion, very clearly, like glass. 

Wait. If the traumatic event was that traumatic, then of course, his brain would forget what happened. Something had happened in those two years, so traumatic, that he had no recollection of it. And it had something to do with Jaemin and his empire.

He scrambled to open back up the letter in the flash drive. But it was now locked. Fuck. Wait a second. He typed in P_T_S_D, and the letter opened again, but it was different. 

Of course his father would pull shit like this. Now, the second part.

<>

_6 years ago, sophomore year in high school_

"This is Lee Jeno. Get close to the boy, and then bring him here." Jaemin's father pointed to an address located in the outskirts of the city. 

"But why do I have to get close to him? You know I'm not any good at this." He replied, slight whine in his voice, not too much to get slapped, but enough to inflict his general disapproval.

But his father didn't budge, of course. He never did. It was the one and only personality trait he shared with Jaemin. They were both stubborn, as fuck.

"You need to get rid of weaknesses. Need not be good at everything, but it's better to have no weaknesses than more strengths."

He had never thought of it as more than a proverb, maybe found in one of those thick volumes that he had ran around in as a kid, never picking one up and sitting down to read. But as he found himself falling for the boy instead of merely befriending him and sending him, wherever his father wanted him to be, he started wondering more.

It seemed as friendship came more easily after love, so they became fast friends. They spent countless days under the rays of the setting sun in the nearby park, doing homework, eating ice cream, doing everything.

But the day came, eventually, when his father came back and warned him he had to bring the boy with him to the location, Jaemin realized the true extent of his words.

"Will I see him again?" He had asked, eyes wide. His father gave him a glance over and shook his head. And right then and there, he realized Jeno was a weakness.

When he walked with him, holding hands, into the facility that spring day, he couldn't find the courage to say anything. It was the last day he saw him, and it would be years later, three years, to be exact, until he found out what exactly happened to him. His first love.


End file.
